Annals 2/Ross & Ross

Paper in: Patrick N. Wyse Jackson & Mary E. Spencer Jones (eds) (2008) Annals of Bryozoology 2: aspects of the history of research on bryozoans. International Bryozoology Association, Dublin, pp. viii+442. TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN BRYOZOOLOGY 271 Two hundred years of Australian bryozoology June R.P. Ross* and Charles A. Ross† *Department of Biology, MS 9160 Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA. †Department of Geology, MS 9080 Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA. 1. Introduction 1.1 Development of Australian bryozoology 1.2 Stratigraphic Distribution of Studies 1.3 Geographic Distribution of Studies 2. Tertiary and Recent Bryozoologists 2.1 Early Discoveries 2.2 Second half of the 19th century 3. Twentieth century 3.1 Further Exploration of Coastal Seas 3.2 Western Australia 3.3 Introduced bryozoans 3.4 Bryozoan sediment facies 4. Paleozoic Bryozoa 4.1 Late Paleozoic 4.2 Lower Paleozoic 4.3 Current Knowledge 5. Acknowledgements 6. Bibliography of Australian bryozoology and selected references 1. Introduction 1.1 Development of Australian bryozoology In the 18th and 19th centuries the southern seas remained one of the vast unknown areas of the world as explorers sought to discover new regions of the globe. Australia remained a largely poorly known region; its continental coasts unmapped except in the vaguest outline. Flinder’s survey in 1825 in the small vessel ‘Tom Thumb’ succeeded in mapping the entire coast line. Early Australian bryozoan studies up until about 1850 parallel these explorations and are from collections that were returned to Europe by French and British 272 ANNALS OF BRYOZOOLOGY 2 Figure 1.—Map of Australia showing various basins and ‘basement’ areas. Names of basins and outline of basins change with time so that a Cambrian-Ordovician basin may have a different shape and name than a Late Paleozoic or Cenozoic basins in roughly the same general geographic place. Some ‘basement’ areas, such as in eastern Victoria, eastern New South Wales, and eastern Queensland, are folded and faulted Paleozoic geosynclinal areas. exploratory excursions (Dunmore, 1969) and studied there by European workers. After the 1850s, and until just after the turn of the century, Australians working on bryozoans had various backgrounds and most were ‘amateurs’ in that they had other work for making a livelihood. Some were medical doctors, many were clerics, and some had other work, but they all shared an excitment about the natural history of Australia and several had a great interest in bryozoans. Many had been formally trained in natural history and they formed local natural history study groups, helped each other through discussions and supported local and other publications with information and articles. Only a few were zoologists and paleontologists who occupied positions in the universities. TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN BRYOZOOLOGY 273 After about 1900 and through about 1950, zoologists and paleontologists were scattered at various institutions, universities, natural history museums, and at several strong state geological surveys, such as the geological surveys in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, and, to a lesser extent, South Australia, and they remained strong until the depression of the 1930s and the Second World War (1939-1946). The Commonwealth of Australia was formed only in 1901 and, faced with strong state geological surveys, the federal government did not pursue a strong, organized, national geological and paleontological presence for a number of years. There were a succession of national Australian geological and paleontological surveys, often short term and created for specific purposes, but these were not organized into one cohesive organization until after the Second World War. In Canberra (Australian Capital Territory) the first of these included a 1945 Commonwealth Resources Survey and, in 1946, the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology, and Geophysics, and its successor, in 1992, the Australia Geological Survey Organisation. The book ‘Geology of the Commonwealth of Australia’ by T.W. Edgeworth David (1950) formed a detailed summary of Australian geology up to about the time of the initiation of a national geological effort. David died in 1934 with his text nearly complete at that time. The depression and World War II intervened and, after the war, W. R. Brown made changes to update the text and saw the three volume work through publication. 1.2 Stratigraphic Distribution of Studies Studies about Australian bryozoans are conveniently grouped into two major categories: Cenozoic (Recent and Tertiary) studies and Paleozoic studies. The history of both Australian Cenozoic and Paleozoic bryozoans studies have taken similar paths. There are few, if any, Mesozoic bryozoans recognized from Australian outcrops because marine sediments of Mesozoic age are limited and poorly known and are unfavorable for bryozoans. 1.3 Geographic Distribution of Studies Figure 1 shows the sedimentary basins of Australia including its continental shelves. At different times in the geologic past, the boundaries of these basins have changed to include more or less area and the names of the basins often are changed to reflect these differences. Also, separate names are often given to the shelf areas to distinguish them from the basins, particularly the Tertiary basins. Many of the basins in the center of Australia are late Precambrian to Devonian in age. ‘Basement’ areas in Figure 1 include some with Paleozoic sediments which have been deformed in geosynclinal fold belts, for example, the ‘basement’ in the Victoria-New South Wales-southern and eastern Queensland, includes lower and middle Paleozoic sediments, along with older rocks. 274 ANNALS OF BRYOZOOLOGY 2 2. Tertiary and Recent Bryozoologists 2.1 Early Discoveries Early exploration of the southern seas around the Australian continent led to extensive dredging and sampling of the oceans. Bryozoans were among the faunas that were harvested. The earliest bryozoan collections were made during the 1800-1804 French expedition of Captain Nicolas Baudin and subsequently described by J. B. P. A. de Lamarck (1816) and J. V. F. Lamouroux (1816). And d’Orbigny (1849) included some bryozoans from Australia. The material was collected from the southeastern and northwestern regions off the Australian coastline. George Busk. George Busk at the British Museum of Natural History studied the ‘Beagle’ collections and other material that was gradually arriving at the British Museum. He published a series of fine papers on Recent Australian bryozoans between 1852 and 1884. Bryozoans collected during the H.M.S. Rattlesnake expedition of 1837 were also described by Busk (1852a, b, 1854, and subsequently in 1875). Busk was a leading bryozoologists with more than 40 publications. He possessed a good command of bryozoan systematics world-wide and extensively described many genera and species. P.H. MacGillivray (1859) also reported on samples collected by the H.M.S. Rattlesnake. William Henry Harvey. Collections made by William Henry Harvey between 1854 and 1856 were subsequently described by Thomson (1858) at the British Museum. Harvey was an Irish Quaker, interested in seaweeds and he travelled to Australia between 1853 and 1856. He made numerous collections of Recent bryozoans in his collecting forays for seaweeds. His travels took him to Perth, Fremantle, and Albany in Western Australia, Point Fairy in South Australia, Melbourne in Victoria, Sydney in New South Wales, and Georgetown and Port Arthur in Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen’s Land). Subsequently, the bryozoans in Harvey’s collections were studied by numerous bryozoologists. Early in these investigations were detailed reports on the cheilostomes prepared by Wyville Thomson (1858, 1859). An updating on Thomson’s species is discussed in Wyse Jackson and Spencer Jones (1996). 2.2 Second half of the 19th century Paul H. MacGillivary. Beginning in 1858 (1859), working in Victoria, Paul H. MacGillivray, a medical doctor and naturalist, started publishing results of his studies on mainly Recent bryozoans along the southeastern portion of the Australian coast (Otway and Gippsland Basins) with a description of a new species of Plumatella. MacGillivray lived in Bendigo, Victoria, and many of his collections came from Queenscliff, Victoria. Some collections were sent to him or made by others, particularly J. Bracebridge Wilson, Maplestone, H. Watts, Baron von Mueller, Hincks, Waters and Miss Jelly. MacGillivray’s TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN BRYOZOOLOGY 275 continued description of Australian Bryozoa. for more than forty years made him an important authority of southern Australian bryozoans until his death in 1895. He was in contact with the British zoologist and bryozoan worker Thomas Hincks (1884) to whom he sent collections. One of his prinicipal publication outlets was in M’Coy’s [McCoy’s] ‘Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria’, a serial work in which about 300 species of bryozoans were described and illustrated between 1879 and 1895. This has been recently reviewed by Bock (2001). The following, extracted, paraphased, and summarized from two obituaries for MacGillivray notes the high regard his collegues had for his studies. Paul Howard MacGillivray (1834-1895) . A famous scientist and medical practitioner, he was born in Edinburgh, son of William MacGillivray and his wife Marion. Paul was educated at Marishal College (and King’s College) at the University of Aberdeen (M.A.,1859),

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